The Real Book; How Options Make Us Unique by Tyler
Tylerof Rome's entry into Varsity Tutor's June 2014 scholarship contest
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The Real Book; How Options Make Us Unique by Tyler - June 2014 Scholarship Essay
A group of students enter a room, laughing at jokes about the math teacher and what was served for lunch that day. One student finds the drum set that he is so familiar with, takes his favorite pair of sticks, and starts drumming on his leg as a warm up. Another starts wheeling the piano closer to the drums, while the bass player and the winds tune their instruments to perfect pitch. It’s a small group. An alto saxophone, a baritone, and a trumpet make up the winds section. Another couple jokes are thrown around. The bass player, laughing and pulling out his book, asks the group what tune they want to play today. Someone names off a classic bossa nova, “Blue Bossa”. The others agree, and the bass player starts snapping his fingers to the tempo as the others look through their books for the tune. With “a one, a two, a one two three four!”, the music begins.
This whole event is made possible by a very special book. In the world of Jazz, we call this The Real Book. There are many variations on this book, but what they all share in common is a vast library of pieces for a small band to play. In a Real book, you can find anything from Sinatra songs, to Count Basie classics, to challenging contemporary pieces like “Armageddon”. Once you find the tune, you’ll see the melody and chord progression written out. It’s just an outline; there’s a section for improvising, and the melody might not be written in quite the same way as you've heard it before. It’s just a starting point, and it’s up to you to craft the finished product.
The best thing about Jazz is the fact that you can choose to play how you like. There aren't any steadfast rules, besides the timeless tip to not play anything that sounds bad. There are a million different combinations of notes that sound good, and you can choose any of them in any order to make up your improvisation time. When my band and I play “Blue Bossa”, we each draw inspiration from the groups we've heard play the tune before, and then we play it with our own little spin. I love the options available to me when I play Jazz.
Whenever I read a book, I always try to imagine myself in the protagonist’s shoes. Stories are a lot of fun when you get to be the main character, but there’s always some point in the tale where I want to do something differently. What if Cinderella didn't run away when the clock struck midnight? What if Bond was a young hot-shot who let his temper get the best of him? What if the blue power-ranger was the leader, instead of the red one? I've never found a story I didn't want to change a little bit, whether it was changing a detail here and there, adding content, or whatever.
I love the idea of the Give Yourself Goosebumps series, where the reader has several options to choose from and they flip to different pages depending on their decisions. I enjoy video games like the popular Mass Effect series, in which the player plays as Commander Shepherd on a quest to save the galaxy by whatever means he/she chooses. I love acting as a character that people have already seen before, but saying and doing things as that character in a bit of a different way than what someone may expect.
If I wrote a book, I would write about options. I’d write about the difficult choice between Frosted Flakes and Honey Nut Cheerios. I’d touch on the differences of Baseball and Softball. I’d compare Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee and then explain why I chose Chuck over Bruce.
I’d write about options because they define us. How you choose to behave, what you choose to do, where you choose to go, what you choose to believe, these decisions tell who we truly are. When you give someone all the options, you give them a chance to be whatever they want to be. The choice to pursue a better education, to volunteer at the soup kitchen, to serve country and people in the armed forces, to take risks, to make mistakes, such options are what give us freedom. I’d write about options, because they are what make us who we are: us.